Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

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Sbiriguda

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Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostWed Aug 01, 2018 9:43 am

Hello everybody this is my first post, greetings from Milan, Italy

I have to do the editing of scuba videos made with red filters mounted on the camera. My setup is Go Pro 6 and I mount on it Backscatter 3.1 flip red filters (mostly I use Shallow and Dive) with no lights until now but I want to add them in the future
I am considering Da Vinci Resolve, but I am a complete beginner
First of all I would to ask if according to you Da Vinci is the proper tool and it has all the features I would need
Second, I kindly ask you if there are tutorials, links or previous discussions about color correction in underwater videos
More or less, the idea is I should use the selective saturation cyan feature, and also fine tune brightness, contrast, clarity, white balance etc. until I get a good result
Thanks
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Sbiriguda

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostThu Aug 09, 2018 4:47 pm

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Hartmut Kuhse

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostThu Aug 09, 2018 4:58 pm

Davinci Resolve is special in color grading. So if you ask, if you can select cyan by saturation, I would say "yes". And fine tune color, brightness, contrast, etc, also yes. There are tutorials of color grading with Resolve, I have never seen one of color grading underwater video, but I am sure, from the ideas you get from a "normal" color grading, you will develop your own ideas for your workflow.
Sot I don't know, if it fits your special needs, I belong to the 80% of the Pareto-People using 20% of the features. But there is a free version. Try it and you will see.


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Christopher Osborn

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostThu Aug 09, 2018 5:39 pm

Something you might find useful: Resolve makes it very easy to generate color Look Up Tables (LUT) that you can then import into Adobe, Avid, etc. So you could load up some footage from your underwater adventures into Resolve, and work to create a color profile that makes your footage look the way you want. Then you can use whatever program you prefer with your custom LUT profiles loaded (and not have to learn a whole new system to get your project done).
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Sbiriguda

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostThu Aug 09, 2018 5:56 pm

Thank you very much, I will give it a try
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MikeMeagher

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostFri Aug 10, 2018 4:23 am

No pun intended but you really have chosen to dive into the deep end here. DaVinci Resolve is a very rich and time consuming program to learn how to utilize. It has all the feature to do post color correction but it will take time to learn how to do it in Resolve. And underwater videography is some of the most difficult to take, especially color issues are severe. I know the complexities deeply you will just need to read forums such as wetpixel and YouTube videos and experiment. It has taken me years to hone in my underwater videography color science and techniques. Eventually invest in underwater lights.. that will make your videos look much better than any amount of post production manipulation can accomplish. Good luck.
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Sbiriguda

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostFri Aug 10, 2018 4:59 am

The point is scuba videos editing is not easy, I am not satisfied with the result. Until now I tried Pinnacle Studio which is good and also relatively cheap and intuitive but I am not 100% happy. Don’t like the others I tried honestly. This is why I would like to experiment with DaVinci, even though it has more hardware requirements and implies more skills. I am considering using also x rite color checker but some people say it’s good some others say it’s not easy to use with good results underwater and also water can alter its colors in the long term
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Uli Plank

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostFri Aug 10, 2018 6:16 am

The typical issues for underwater film or photography are not what such color checkers are made for.

You loose different wavelengths at different depth under water, so you may need to individually correct each shot if they are not shot at the same depth. Of course, if some wavelength is near zero, you can't regain that information by any software, since it wasn't recorded in the first place. Have a look at the RGB parade to see what's missing. Plus, cameras react quite differently from our eye-brain system.

So, the best advice you got here are lights to take with you.

(I'm a diver myself)
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Sbiriguda

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostFri Aug 10, 2018 8:48 am

Yes, I use both lights and backscatter 3.1 redfilter (mostly shallow and dive)
The color correction is mainly white balance enhancement, then fine tuning of the colors
I am also interested in very different water light and color conditions. I am planning among other things to shoot videos also in rivers with completely different conditions compared to the sea
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Sbiriguda

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostFri Aug 10, 2018 8:52 am

MikeMeagher wrote:It has taken me years to hone in my underwater videography color science and techniques


By the way I watched some of your videos, they are awesome
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Gary Hango

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostFri Aug 10, 2018 1:52 pm

I saw a tutorial somewhere where they replaced the red channel with the blue or green channel so the red channel had some data to work with during color correction.
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Uli Plank

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostFri Aug 10, 2018 2:43 pm

Possible, I once did that for analog footage where one channel had drop-outs, but it'll just look 'colorful' not natural.
No, an iGPU is not enough, and you can't use HEVC 10 bit 4:2:2 in the free version.

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JPOwens

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostFri Aug 10, 2018 6:14 pm

Uli Plank wrote:The typical issues for underwater film or photography are not what such color checkers are made for.
You lose different wavelengths at different depth under water)


The familiar red-cut.
It depends on the amount of water between you and the subject. Seawater more pronounced.

No single filter or correction is going to fix this, which is why the chart is of limited value - it will work for that distance, but only for a few inches around that position. Then it will be a red/cyan balance again for anything closer or farther away.

Here's an example of a nice try:

https://patents.justia.com/patent/5719715

and then (SMPTE Journal article, June 1984)

http://www.aquacolor.com/Smptestrt.htm
which is actually a very worthwhile read, color photography, before/afters, graphical relationship between light incidence and filter properties of seawater.

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Jean Claude

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Re: Editing scuba videos made with filters mounted on Go Pro

PostSat Aug 11, 2018 4:56 pm

JPOwens wrote:
Uli Plank wrote:The typical issues for underwater film or photography are not what such color checkers are made for.
You lose different wavelengths at different depth under water)


The familiar red-cut.
It depends on the amount of water between you and the subject. Seawater more pronounced.

No single filter or correction is going to fix this, which is why the chart is of limited value - it will work for that distance, but only for a few inches around that position. Then it will be a red/cyan balance again for anything closer or farther away.

Here's an example of a nice try:

https://patents.justia.com/patent/5719715

and then (SMPTE Journal article, June 1984)

http://www.aquacolor.com/Smptestrt.htm
which is actually a very worthwhile read, color photography, before/afters, graphical relationship between light incidence and filter properties of seawater.

jPo, CSI


Thanks for the links jPO. Very interesting!
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